Why Intelligence Fails: Lessons from the Iranian Revolution and the Iraq War (Cornell Studies in Security Affairs)

Good read w historical context not provided in news outlets or documentaries. A must read

Undoubtedly the most interesting portion of this very interesting book, is the CIA sponsored post-mortem report on why the Iranian Revolution caught CIA by surprise. Remarkably, this report is presented in full with very few redactions and includes the critiques of the report by senior CIA officials. As such it makes for fascinating reading.The brief given to Jervis (then a part time CIA consultant) and an unnamed CIA officer who was to assist in this work was to concentrate on the specific issue of the analytic tradecraft employed by CIA Iranian analysts prior to the revolution. On the whole Jervis and his shadowy assistant produced what appears to be a very fair report. This report concluded that given the information available to them, the two CIA political analysts assigned to Iran did a pretty credible job. One of these analysts was actually an Iranian target expert and Farsi linguist.Yet it is clear that these analysts took a very narrow view of their specialty and failed to place political events in the context of social and economic changes then effecting Iran. They also failed to make use of open source information on Iran or examine the strong Shia religious influences affecting Iran. As Jervis noted in his report what was then CIA's office of political analysis failed to communicate with its office of economic analysis. Further the National Intelligence Officer (NIO) for Iran failed to communicate with any of the analysts working Iran or to provide any guidance to them. Although his brief specifically did not include collection issues, Jervis also noted that the U.S. Embassy staff in Tehran (including CIA officers) included no Farsi speakers and did not have significant contacts outside of the Iranian Government.The CIA response to this report is quite illuminating if not surprising. They ignored his comments about lack of internal communication between the political and economic analyst, between CIA analysts and State INR analysts, and between the NIO and working analysts. They also ignored his comment about the cultural isolation of CIA officers in Tehran. They did however make a great deal of his general exoneration of CIA analysts on the narrow grounds that the information they were using was quite limited. And of course there was a good deal of bureaucratic posturing to demonstrate that no one at CIA could be blamed for this failure.The second post-mortem that Jervis provides in this book that he did on his own dime, is a review of the notorious National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) that argued that Saddam Hussein's Iraq had an active program for building Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD). In this effort Jervis again makes a successful effort to present a fair and balanced account of how CIA produced such a completely incorrect NIE. In the course of doing so he provides very good discussions of the sensitive issue of political influence on intelligence production and conversely of the role of intelligence in policy formulation.This is a good book for intelligence aficionados and for anyone trying to understand how the U.S. intelligence system actually works.

Why does intelligence fail? Is there anything we can do to address failure? Those are key questions addressed by political scientist Robert Jervis. His methodology is appropriate: he uses two case studies to examine intelligence failure and how one might diagnose failure and improve matters to reduce the odds of major failure in the future.The two case studies are the Iranian Revolution and the fall of the Shah and the inaccurate intelligence on weapons of mass destruction (WMD) in the run up to the Iraq War and the deposing of Saddam Hussein. The first of the case studies is based on Jervis' own report to the CIA after the failure of intelligence in the Iran event. Here, the Shah of Iran was overthrown and the United States was caught unaware. Intelligence breakdowns of one sort or another were a part of this (from descriptive rather than analytic intelligence, pre-existing beliefs about what was going on, and the like). While Jervis notes some means of addressing problems, he notes that it would not be certain that--even then--the rapid fall of the Shah would have been clearly predicted.The second case study is the failure of intelligence regarding WMD in Iraq. The book examines the nature of the failure and then tries to explain that failure. Among factors leading to failure--confirmation bias (seeking information to demonstrate that there were WMD), individual analysts'/operatives' failures (e.g., trusting Curveball, a source of information on Iraq who was, as it turns out, not a reliable source).How to address intelligence failure? Jervis is critical of the "reforms" initiated within the intelligence community. Among these: postmortems (discussion of intelligence efforts after an event, to learn what went right and went wrong and try to draw lessons for future intelligence operations), peer review of intelligence reports, and so on.Overall, an interesting--if somewhat dry--account of how one might improve intelligence. Also, there are valuable suggestions about simple solutions to a complex problem. The book does provoke some reflection, which is all to the good.

I thought this was a great book. It helped me develop insight into the problem of warning.Policymakers aren’t going to listen to warning until they are prepared to take up a problem. Great book from a non-biased scholar who was given great access to do a critical look at some Intel failures.

One thing I noticed in common with great books such as this one is that they are cheap and affordable for everyone. This book really gets into the granular details on why intelligence fails. Definitely worth it for anyone who would like to know more about stepping into Intelligence industry before getting into it. Also, good for the experienced folks who would like to know on steps for fixing it.

An excellent summary of the practices, actions and psychological approaches that ensure that forecasting and analysis is a success. Using the two major Iranian political upheavals, Robert Jervis provides an excellent overview of the administrative, human and psychological factors that bring about success.

Poorly written and poorly reasoned, I was in Iran from 1979 t0 1979 and virtually nothing in the book really captures that period.

This book was required for my Level 600 course for my Intelligence Masters. It arrived quickly and in perfect condition. The points the author makes are spot on from an intelligence stand point.

With „Why Intelligence Fails“ Robert Jervis provides a detailed and very insightful critique of two intelligence estimates but discerns broader problems as well as possible solutions to make intelligence analysis better from there.The author was contracted by the CIA to conduct a post mortem analysis of CIA estimates of the stability of the Persian government before the revolution of 1978. He uses this as well as the documents on the NIE concerning Iraqi WMD to analyze why the estimates were wrong. Jervis did not write a book for the average reader but for intelligence professionals and therefore does not make an attempt to simplify his language or catch the reader’s attention. He neither guides the reader nor dramatizes his account but very objectively states the facts and makes deductions.After a short introduction Jervis provides some background to the CIA estimates on the Shah’s regime and his own report. He then provides the bulk of his original unclassified report and discusses his findings as well as the CIA reaction to them. His discussion of the WMD NIE is more to the point as less details are publicly available. Again some context is given and objective details are critiqued. Especially interesting here is his assessment the political level of the administration indeed made it clear, what results it demanded and exerted pressure to get them but neither interfered nor rewritten any part of the intelligence estimate. In the final chapter Jervis provides possible solutions to the problems he discussed and points toward a different organizational as well as analytical culture within the Intelligence Community.In summary this is a well done critique of the intelligence analyses in question which could have been written better. While mainly interesting to the professional reader concerned with intelligence analysis it does hold many interesting insights for readers interested in the historical events concerned and what part the intelligence estimates played.

It misses the vital flaw in the intelligence on Iran in 1979 that the US intelligence was not aware of the Shah's illness

筆者のロバート・ジャーヴィスは世界で最も高名な国際政治学者の一人である。バリバリの理論家である。そんな大物学者が、イラン革命とイラク戦争で米国情報機関が犯した過ちという非常に世俗的なテーマに取り組んだのが本書である。最初はジャーヴィスがインテリジェンスの本を書いたということで違和感を感じたのだが、本書を読み、ジャーヴィスがCIAとは以前から提携関係にあったことを知った。また、確かに彼の主著であるPerception and Misperceptionも確かにインテリジェンスと大きく関わる本であった。本書はイラン革命とイラク戦争を素材に、タイトルどおり、「どうしてインテリジェンスは失敗するのか」について論じたものである。特にイラク戦争については米情報機関の様々な失態が指摘され、議論が尽くされた感もあるのだが、本書でジャーヴィスは国際政治の理論家として、インテリジェンスの専門家とはかなり異なった分析を見せており、非常に興味深い。彼の主張は、社会科学の厳格な方法論を用いれば、「失敗」のリスクは除去はできずとも低減できたはずだというものである。社会科学においては、仮説を立て、思い込みを排除しつつ根拠を示し、どの仮説が最も事象を的確に説明しているのかを明らかにすることが求められているが、ジャーヴィスは、インテリジェンスの世界においてもこれらの方法論は有用であり、仮説、思い込み、根拠についての吟味が情報機関では十分に行われていないと論ずる。これはいかにも学者的な議論であるが、傾聴に値するのではないか。本書の弱点は、インテリジェンス活動のうち、もっぱら分析の側面のみを対象にしており、収集の側面についてほとんど捨象している点であろう。これはジャーヴィスのバックグラウンドを踏まえると仕方が無い面もあると思う。また、ジャーヴィスの分析手法は極めてアカデミックであるし、文章も極めて分かりにくい。ただし、彼が構築する理論はあくまでも緻密で、説得力は十二分である。本書を読み、日本の情報機関の実態はどうなっているのだろうと思った。社会科学の方法論は活用されているのだろうか？はたまた、情報機関の活動に対してこのようにアウトサイダーの立場から重厚な分析ができる学者はいるのだろうか？